Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has made verified Facebook and Instagram users pay a new fee.
Mark Zuckerberg wants to charge users who want a blue tick, which seems to be a copy of Elon Musk’s controversial Twitter rules.
Since almost 20 years ago, the tech giant has been slowly building an empire out of social media.
Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook in 2004 while he was still a student at Harvard.
A few years later, in 2012, the billionaire made an unbelievable offer of $1 billion to buy Instagram, which turned out to be one of the best tech deals of all time.
The photo-sharing app was clearly a good buy, as it brought in a huge $20 billion in revenue for Meta in 2019.
But since the purchase, many Facebook and Instagram users have had to deal with changes and updates all the time.
Whether it’s the Instagram reels that seem to have been inspired by TikTok, the growing number of people who want the platform to bring back the chronological timeline or the new feature that lets people start commenting in gifs, it’s clear that tensions are rising.
So much so that there is an online petition with over 332k signatures asking the Meta-owned platform to roll back most of the recent changes and “Make Instagram Instagram Again.”
But the latest change is a lot bigger than just letting people add gifs to comments.
On February 19, Mark Zuckerberg went on Facebook to talk about the latest changes to both Meta platforms.
In what was called a “new product announcement,” Zuckerberg told users that soon, they would be getting a brand-new subscription service.
He wrote:
This week, we’re starting to roll out Meta Verified.
Meta Verified is a paid service that lets you “verify your account” with a government ID. Users will get a blue badge that gives them “extra impersonation protection” against fake accounts that say they are them.
It also says that people who sign up for Meta Verified will have “direct access” to customer service.
This new feature,
Zuckerberg continued,
is about increasing authenticity and security across our services.
The new service will start at $11.99 (£10) per month on the web or $14.99 (£12) on iOS, and it will be available in Australia and New Zealand this week, with more countries to follow soon.
The news sent the internet into a tailspin, and many people were angry at Zuckerberg for making the choice.
One Twitter user posted:
‘Meta Verified’ is a trailing indicator suggesting that we have passed the point where there is nothing left of our lives for Zuckerberg to profitably strip-mine.
But of course Zuckerberg would jump on the verified bandwagon though I wonder what took him so long,
a second added.
A final user asked:
Why would anyone pay for social media?
